Hi Alison
We like the Plustek and FineReader but in terms of scanning I like even
better to avoid the whole scanning-by-hand thing and get our books scanned
by a document scanning firm. Saves a huge amount of time. We did a pilot
project where we bought a bunch of titles from Amazon for one particular
pupil and then sent them to a local firm, DDSR http://www.ddsr.com/. They
cut the spines off, scanned them, and sent us back DVDs with PDFs (OCRd) of
the books. They even added bookmarks and inserted the CLA VIP copyright
statement for us. Very painless. The OCR needs checking and maybe repeating
with FineReader for textbooks with complicated layout because DDSR use the
standard Acrobat OCR which isn't as good as FineReader, but it saves going
for brain death scanning a page at a time. There will be local scanning
bureaus to you but we'd certainly recommend DDSR.
See attached for more info and also
http://www.books4all.org.uk/Making-Books/Scan-and-OCR/.
Paul
_______________________________________________
Paul D. Nisbet
Senior Research Fellow
Communication, Access, Literacy and Learning (CALL) Scotland
Moray House School of Education
University of Edinburgh
Paterson's Land, Holyrood Road
Edinburgh EH8 8AQ
Tel. 0131 651 6236 Fax 0131 651 6234
email [log in to unmask]
CALL Scotland: http://www.callscotland.org.uk
SQA Digital Exam Papers: http://www.AdaptedDigitalExams.org.uk
The Scottish Computer Voice: http://www.theScottishVoice.org.uk
Books for All: http://www.booksforall.org.uk
WordTalk reader for Word: http://www.wordtalk.org.uk
________________________________________________
--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
-----Original Message-----
From: A discussion list for Assistive Technology professionals.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alison Clibbens
Sent: 09 March 2010 16:32
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Alternative Formats Services
Hi
We are in the process of setting up an Alternative Formats service in the
University of Plymouth library and are looking into buying optic book
scanners
and OCR software packages. Plustek book scanners (3600 and A300) have
been suggested, together with ABBYY FineReader software. We would
welcome feedback on these from those of you who are using them, and any
other recommendations.
Thanks
Alison
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